Challenge #4 - The Mini-Me Challenge

[mice]

and i've already eliminated 3 civs. Of course eliminating civs isn't all that hard when each of them only have 3 or 4 cities.

Eliminated civs ?? Isnt it a good idea to leave them to build cities ??

 

[Betafor]

I dont see what the problem is about settling/not settling. Just say you are allowed no more than 3 cities at any one time, period. If you end up with an extra settler, you can do what you will with it so long as you dont settle(i would gift to civ). Assuming the rng is actually random, the games has a big luck influence anyway, so if you pop a settler just before you're about to build one - tough luck.

 

[PeteJ]

Eliminated civs ?? Isnt it a good idea to leave them to build cities ??

I think that with 11 total civs, getting rid of 3 is not going to affect the amount of cities too much. I may be wrong.

 

[mice]

Are yes, I forgot there were so many. How my computer can handle it.

 

[Wlauzon]

I guess I totally suck at warmongering, my best so far is 9

I think I am waiting too long to attack, probably should just go for barracks > Keshlak > mass attacks.

 

[Wlauzon]

As far as setllers go, I don't see the big deal. The rules are pretty clear - it says THREE CITIES. If you want to have 22 settlers, go for it. Seems pretty obvious to me.

If you have more than three cities then you lose.

 

[DaviddesJ]

As far as setllers go, I don't see the big deal. The rules are pretty clear - it says THREE CITIES. If you want to have 22 settlers, go for it. Seems pretty obvious to me.

The problem is that if you're allowed to build settlers and give them away, that's almost certainly the best strategy. You can probably build many hundreds (thousands?) of settlers, and give them all away to a few adversaries whom you've reduced to one pitiful city each, and repeatedly raze their cities as they build them.

(Are you allowed to gift units to a player with whom you're at war? I haven't tried that.)

 

[Lynxx]

Alrighty, just to clear some things up and allow people to focus on the game.

Build as many settlers as you like(EDIT: Why allow people to build something that will be very hard to check if they missued or not?.... YOU CAN ONLY BUILD TWO SETTLERS IN TOTAL), you are not allowed to gift the excess settlers to the AI so they wont do any good for anyone. You are allowed a maximum of 3cities at any time so the extra settlers are pretty useless.

(I am quite sure that you can not allow the AI to capture one of your towns and then raze it later as you will automaticly recapture it, if this is not the case then people are only allowed to count the razed cities that was originally built by the AI)

 

[parachute4u]

The intention is to produce a compact and efficient war machine combined with skilful target acquisition and then bully the locals.

Great, really looking forward to play this one

Oh.... and gifting settlers and the like is obviously cheeese

 

[Raiser]

GIFTING SETTLERS

You are not allowed to gift the excess settlers to the AI

I concur.

And the ideal situation to prove that you haven't is that your 'settlers built total' (on the Info Screen > Stats Page) equals three or less.



GOODY HUTS

What if you pop settlers from goody huts? Can you still build 1 or 2 more?

No. Sorry.

#1. If you pop a settler from a goody hut before you have 3 cities or have started your final settler. Easy. He can be used to build 1 of your 3 cities, because the popped settler does add to your settlers total on the Info Screen > Stats Page.


#2. If you've got 3 cities already and you come across an un-popped goody hut, and it pops a settler, then it will push your total number of settlers to 4 on the Info Screen > Stats Page. The 1 original + 2 built (if you choose not to make 1 of your 3 cities a capture) + 1 the goody hut settler = 4.

The ideal situation is to say "bad draw, I should have got to the hut sooner" and put him in the capital unused. That way when you post your 1600AD save you can say, "I know it says I have built 4 settlers in the Info Screen > Stats Page, but the fourth guy is sitting unused in the capital. So you know I didn't build four cities."

Note: If you've already had situation #2 and you gifted it to an AI then fine. The rules were unclear. Remember it's just an informal game, so that attempt is still valid.

If you've already had situation #2 and you built a 4th city with the popped settler, then sorry it's not a valid try. It's fairly clear that you accidental broke the primary condition:

What's the catch?
You can't have more than three cities. Small is beautiful.

I hope that's clear. I've amended the fine print.

- No gifting your settlers or cities to the AI's

- Three cities maximum. Whether the cities are obtained by the original settler, or a built settler, or a settler popped from a goody hut, or a city capture it's all the same. Just stick to the limit of constructing only 3 cities between 4000BC and 1600AD.

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[Raiser]

I guess I totally suck at warmongering, my best so far is 9

I think I am waiting too long to attack, probably should just go for barracks > Keshlak > mass attacks.

Still a good try, Wlauzon. I tried to make this challenge accessible to all levels. Give it another go and experiment.

Are yes, I forgot there were so many. How my computer can handle it.

Sorry. I had to go to 10ai's on Warlord as opposed to 5ai's on Monarch to make this challenge work for beginners, while attempting to not let experts run out of targets.

I forget sometimes that I have a beast of a machine.



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[castiglione]

Here's my save, 29 cities razed. I could definitely do better on a replay, as I made some mistakes towards the end (and also, knowing the terrain would have been helpful!). I find it more fun to just try once, though, so I'm submitting this.

Notes:

Spoiler :

* My second settler stepped onto the spot to build my third city, I saw the radius around him, I pressed 'B'.. wait a minute. That radius was white ;_; So, I went after Frederick first and made Munich (later Ghengisgrad) my third city.
* My basic tactic was to continually produce mounted units (plus a smattering of support) and just have the horde sweeping around the map, constantly fighting
* Keshiks lasted a LONG time, then Knights a while, and right at the end I had Cavalry
* I actually got Cavalry a bit too late, I think, so I got bogged down at the end. In ~1550 I had to lower my science rate below 100% for the first time when Tokugawa attacked me his samurai are no match for cavalry, of course, but it basically tied up the end
* I tried to keep the AIs as backward as possible, but of course I did occasionally need cats/CR Axemen/etc
* I don't think my city locations were perfectly optimal, but they worked pretty well. The third one was 'behind' for a while, unfortunately, due to having been captured rather than founded. As it was my copper source, that caused problems for a while, but not big ones
* I wiped out 5 of the civs, but I think that was a tactical error; it would have probably been better to leave the toughest nuts intact and go after the soft targets of more enemies. Then again, keeping some friends meant I was able to tech trade a lot (despite having three production cities, I was ahead ever since Alphabet)

Although the regenerating-start thing isn't for me, scherbchen's 55 cities is still very impressive! 55 with my strategy would have required a LOT better play than I can currently do

 

[lateralis]

well I managed to get to 36. very interesting scenario, I've never really played as "the destructor" before and found it interesting to know ahead of time that I didn't need to think, just kill

I think I could have done better with the following changes:

1) my early goal was to get 3 production centers up and running ASAP and then pump out military and only military. If I had gone for a few more early razes, my number might have gone up. also, I built stonehenge so my borders would expand without having to do anything else and pyramids for police state. might have done better to skip these but I'm not sure. might try again.

2) I did NO tech trading to speak of because every tech I researched was one I DIDN'T wan them to have (CoL, HR, CS, GUILDS) so as a result, I only hit knights like 30 turns before the time limit.

3) tech order - I went for HR then construction, then CS but had to backtrack for machinery (moron) and then to guilds. I probably could have done this better as evidenced by the fact that some of you managed to get cavalry.

 

[Raiser]

Good scores for castiglione and lateralis. Congrats, thanks for posting.

Scherbchen still holds on to his lead the way with 55.

I wiped out 5 of the civs, but I think that was a tactical error; it would have probably been better to leave the toughest nuts intact and go after the soft targets of more enemies.

That's a good point.

With this challenge, for a player of average ability, is it better to reduce the number of AI's that are pissed at you or just prune the little cities from all of the AI's?



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[PaganPaulWhisky]

Looks like I am the new leader. I managed to raze 69 cities. Unlike Scherbchen I did not go the cavalry route but instead used grenadiers. I don't think wiping the civs out makes much of a difference as I wiped out 7 or 8 of them and it didnt really slow me down much. The ending of the game was pretty fun since I was at war with 6 civs at one time. Organized and expansive has always been my favorite trait combo for war, although organized isn't really useful when you have 3 cities.

 

[PaganPaulWhisky]

Whoops, just noticed that I posted organized above. I was also playing Ottomans and got confused. Anyway aggresive and expansive is probably just as good. That was the reason I went for grenadiers since I could just promote all my macemen and get tons of free promotions.

Spoiler :

The march promotion really helped with this challenge. I could basically run my grenadiers all over the place and not have to stop. It really sped up razing of cities. My opening play was a CS sling followed by machinery to get early macemen. I went to war with axemen while waiting for machinery and basically never stopped from there. I got the heroic epic pretty late, but my war engine was really fueled by bueracracy for a good chunk of the game. I didn't really use seige weapons much since triple promoted grenadiers could easily handle taking cities by themselves.

 

[Wlauzon]

One tactic that "sort of worked" for me is to build a ton of military and just put them on auto, so that they just auto pillage.

By "sort of" unfortunately this really needs cavalry to work well, and I got it far too late. Not really sure it would work as a real tactic, but was kind of fun to see the long strings of pillage messages.

But my best is still only 13, I guess I just am not a warmonger enough - I keep wanting to build "just one more improvement or one more tech", so I get started too late. 95% of my "real" games I go for cultural domination, so I never really learned the best strategy for wiping out other civs.

By the time I get where I want, it is so late in the game that the sheer logistics of moving units around fast enough to take many out is the main problem.

 

[parachute4u]

This is how the emperor AI must feel playing against me in other games
It is 1400 AD and all you have is ARCHERS?!? -- I will get cavalry in 5 turns, -- well, that's bad for you....

Razed 15 cities so far. I'm afraid I WON'T make it to railroads

 

[mice]

Exactly 50. Really good challenge Raiser .

I did pretty sloppy logistics, and i think good logistics is the key to this one.

Spoiler :

I did CS sling, then maces to Grenadiers. Attacked Toku,Issabella,Ghandi, keeping Frederick and Elizabeth as Confucian Friends. In the last centuries I turned on Frederick and Liz, but should have gone for therm earlier and left Toku and Issa crippled instead of wiping them out

.Movement of troops needs close attention I think which made it such a good challenge

 

[Raiser]

One weekend down, one to go. And the story so far with the first attempts looks like this:

PaganPaulWhisky....69

Scherbchen...........55

Mice.....................50

Lateralis................36

Castiglione.............29

(Only listed posted saves. If I've missed anyone let me know.)



Congrats to PaganPaulWhisky on 69 cities razed and the slaughter of 285 innocent units.

Spoiler :

Your firepower graph really jumped at 500BC and kept rising. Impressive. Couldn't quite see what caused the plateau between 800-1200AD, but whatever it was set you up for a good finish.

Glad your 'puter coped with 11 nations, mice.

Movement of troops needs close attention I think which made it such a good challenge.

Spoiler :

In this rocky land I am curious to see if anyone can make good use of The Keshik, and their 'ignores terrain movement costs' ability, as an aggressive early option to get an extra dozen cities before the big troops come on-line.

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